Rosa Golijan

A mother wanted to discover her son's risk for certain diseases, so she mailed a DNA sample to genetics testing company 23and Me. The results made her cry: Her child's genetic profile was entirely inconsistent with his family's. What happened?

Turns out that there was a little bit of confusion at the 23andMe lab which meant that samples and results were mixed up:

Up to 96 customers may have received and viewed data that was not their own. Upon learning of the mix-ups, we immediately identified all customers potentially affected, notified them of the problem and removed the data from their accounts. The lab is now concurrently conducting an investigation and re-processing the samples of the affected customers and their accurate results will be posted early next week.